1
ARTIFACTS
2
The goal of the Geospatial Interoperability Reference Architecture is to make geospatial 3
information and technology more broadly accessible, geospatial investments more effective, and 4
geospatial practitioners and business systems more productive. The GIRA provides a blueprint for 5
architectural analysis and reporting within an Agency’s Enterprise Architecture. The reference 6
implementations of the GIRA are intended to provide Solution Architects with go-to Target 7
Architectures for the sensitive-but-unclassified and public domains that so Government Program 8
Managers can reuse and/or emulate. These reference implementations provide best practices for 9
geospatial interoperability and information sharing to drive: 10
• Discoverability – Discoverable by appropriate users, systems, and communities of 11
interest. 12
• Accessibility – Available in a usable form that is easily understood. 13
• Understandability – Able to be used intelligently using commonly defined terms and 14
intuitive interfaces and tools. 15
• Interoperability – Readily consumed and combined with other geospatial 16
capabilities (software, data, services, or systems) using open-standards or best 17
practices for geospatial information and services exchange. 18
• Reliability – Capabilities are consistently delivered over time. 19
• Trust – Accuracy, currency, completeness, and source of capabilities (software, 20
data, services, and systems) are available to users. 21
6.6.1 UNCLASSIFIED/PUBLIC DOMAIN: GEOSPATIAL
22
PLATFORM
23
The Federal Geospatial Platform130 is a FY 2011 budget initiative and Presidential call for action.
24
Through the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), federal departments and agencies are 25
developing the Geospatial Platform to more effectively share place-based products and services 26
to the public. The Geospatial Platform will be a managed portfolio of common geospatial data, 27
services, and applications contributed and administered by authoritative sources and hosted on a 28
shared infrastructure, for use by government agencies and partners to meet their mission needs 29
and the made openly available. 30
The content of all datasets and services are required to be verified by the agencies to be 31
consistent with federal privacy, national security, and information quality policies. Additionally, 32
the Geospatial Platform provides access to data from various partners across state, tribal, 33
regional, and local governments as well as non-governmental organizations.The overall goal is to 1
reduce duplication of efforts and promote the use of open standards among agencies’ geospatial 2
programs. The move to a standard Geospatial Platform offers many advantages to its users: 3
• A “one-stop shop” to deliver trusted, nationally consistent geospatial products, with 4
a preference towards interoperable web services. 5
• Tools for the centralized discovery, access, and use of data and services managed 6
and maintained in multiple agencies. 7
• Tools that enable cross-government data to be displayed in a visual context. 8
• Tools enabling on-line collaboration communities focused on mission and/or 9
priority issues, where federal and non-federal agencies and partners can share and 10
create geospatial data and map products to provide common understanding of 11
information for decision making. 12
• Problem-solving applications that are built once and reused many times. 13
• A shared cloud computing infrastructure. 14
Figure 6-2 provides a high-level conceptual depiction of the Geospatial Platform. Some of the 15
features include the migration of the Geospatial Open Source catalog to geo.data.gov, which 16
includes a search interface and community features. In addition to catalog search, users will be 17
able to create and share maps. Agencies are also encouraged to provide content supporting their 18
business cases. 19
1
Figure 6-2. Geospatial Platform Conceptual Model
2
The Geospatial Platform employs a multi-tired, services-based architecture that support open 3
standards. Figure 6-3 provides a more detailed view of the technical architecture. The Geospatial 4
Platform provides users a standard web interface and developers with application programmer 5
interfaces. Web services are provisioned on the platform layer. Data services are managed in a 6
shared data layer. 7
1
Figure 6-3. Geospatial Platform Technical Architecture
2
The Geospatial Platform is expected to expand access to high quality data, enabling the increased 3
sharing and reuse of resources resulting in reduced costs. The integrated approach will mean that 4
the federal portfolio of geospatial data will be better managed, service a broader audience, and 5
be easier to use. 6
6.6.2 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY: GEOSPATIAL
7
INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE
8
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Geospatial Information Infrastructure (GII)131 is a
9
target architecture for the enterprise platform to support multiple missions across the Homeland 10
Security community. It provides access to a wide set of shared capabilities that support geospatial 11
visualization, analysis, processing, modeling and simulation, and content delivery of geospatial 12
information. The GII provides secure hosting services for geospatial web and mobile applications, 13
interoperable access to more than 600 layers of geospatial foundation and infrastructure 14
information that includes high resolution US population information, pre- and post-incident 15
imagery, public alerts and warnings, and derivative map products. It also includes a general 1
purpose web map viewer called OneView, interoperable web map services for desktop GIS users 2
and system integrators based on OGC standards, support for multiple viewing solutions, and 3
application programmer interfaces (APIs) that allow application developers to extend GII 4
functionality (web services, and data feeds) into customer centric applications. Developers can 5
use the GII APIs with the underlying binaries and programming references to build internet-based 6
mobile or web mapping applications using GII services and components. 7
Figure 6-4 depicts the multi-tiered, services-based architecture for the GII. The GII technical 8
architecture supports open standards for search, web services, APIs, and data publication. GII 9
application hosting and web services are provisioned on the platform layer. Data services are 10
managed in a shared data layer. 11
12
Figure 6-4. DHS Geospatial Information Infrastructure (GII) Technical Architecture
13
Figure 6-5 illustrates how GII services can be leveraged to support business application and 14
systems as referenced by the DHS Common Operating Picture (COP). 15
1
Figure 6-5. DHS Common Operating Picture Aligned to DHS Geospatial Information Infrastructure
2 3